The other day, my wife asked me if I knew why she was seeing so many display ads online related to insurance. I told her that “Big Brother” was watching her search history and serving up ads based on what she was most interested in. Note: My wife is an insurance adjustor and her search history clearly speaks to that. I seem to get a lot of ads related to internet marketing, Jeeps and beaches. Imagine that.

Anyway, the “third grade explanation” is this. Display networks analyze your search history when you visit their sites and use that info to serve relevant ads when you are on other sites in their networks. (Some companies leverage several networks at once. These companies are called DSPs.) Here’s a cool graphic that makes some sense out of it.

So I’m a search guy – not a display ad guy. But I thought it a relevant topic to share here on “Let’s Translate”, so I recruited one of the best internet marketing teachers I know to write a guest post about display retargeting.

-David

A Search Marketer’s Journey into Display – Donny Dye

Over the last several months, I have made the surprising journey from search engine marketing to display retargeting. And like traveling to a different country, I found myself exposed to new languages, tactics, and measurements. I was beginning to wonder how I fit into a world with pictures rather than three lines of text.

Luckily, I found search retargeting. Suddenly, I saw this world as a new landscape that could have ties to a world I knew. In fact, it appeared I was even on the same planet.

I have included a parable of sorts to help explain what search retargeting is and why I think it is great.

A Tale of Two Sales Associates

Entering into the mobile digital age as a professional has caused several things to change in my life. Least favorite of all being that I now work off of a laptop instead of what was once called a “normal” computer. Such a conundrum put me in the market for a new monitor so that I could at least see what I was typing.

So off to Best Buy I went.

Standing in front of a wall of monitors, I began to realize a simple truth. That despite my vast knowledge of all things digital, I knew next to nothing about monitors. So, I began to evaluate each model based on a mixture of price and features. Full HD, refresh rate, size of image, ports, I was beginning to feel like I could get a fair evaluation. Until this approach led me to a brand I had never heard of, and judging by its thickness, had eaten the monitor next to it.

I had chosen poorly.

That is when a blue-shirted store employee came to my rescue.
“Looking for a monitor?” This guy was going to be my savior.
“Yes, I am looking for something that is good quality, but under $250”
“Okay, what features do you want?” A pretty basic question, but I am certain he is just warming up.
“I have a mac so whatever will work with that?”
“Right.”

And then, he does it. He leans over and begins to SEARCH for one word on every card, “mac”. He goes card by card, scanning for just three letters. After he is done, he turns and says, “This one says mac compatible. It should work.” And then smiles as though mission accomplished.

So, I thank him for his help and walk out of the section thinking that somehow I am the idiot.

I wander into the CD section even though I have not bought one in years, a defeated medium for a defeated consumer.

Then, the craziest thing happens. Another blue-shirted individual walks up to me and says, “I noticed that you were looking at monitors. I am actually the regional support manager for LG. If you have not made up your mind, I would love to tell you about what makes LG different.”

I looked at him and said, “Absolutely. That would be wonderful.”

He then walked me through what can only be called an educational bashing of why not only is LG the best, but also, why purchasing anything else is like punching a baby seal in the face.

Within minutes, I am walking to the checkout line with a LG IPS236.

The Folly of a Six Second Strategy

The purchase of my monitor revealed several things to me about the world of search and display.

First of all, search can be effective. Just like my sales associate, a search engine looks for exactly what I tell it to. And in a matter of a second can list out what it deems to be the closest fit. As Google once bragged, “a searcher is on and off the site in six seconds.”

But just as it did in Best Buy, this approach does little to nothing to educate the consumer. In fact, a search engine is great if you are at the end of your search, but if you are still figuring out what questions to ask, a search engine can only respond with the most obvious answer, leaving you to wonder about the future of America. (Sorry about that, I was thinking about the first sale associate.)

Search retargeting works just like the second salesman. After a user has performed a search, display ads are served relevant to that search as the user continues to surf. In essence, it continues the conversation.

And that is good thing. The ad even continues to show on sites that may not be about what I searched for.

Was I upset by the salesperson approaching me in the CD section? No, I still needed a monitor. In fact, I was really happy that he had something new to say about what I wanted to purchase.

Did I care that he worked for LG? Of course not, I was rather relieved that he knew more than “Captain Cardreader”, who only looked at the specs of a monitor, not why one might be better.

Search retargeting does all of this. It allows the advertiser to tell his story away from the competition, with pictures and graphics, and he can even tell his story more than once. Not a bad way to market.

For a search marketer like me, I have found several things that make me see how this new approach to marketing will change not only the world of display, but also the world of search.

In my next article, we will discuss how search retargeting is not a nice thing to learn, but how it is tailor-made for search marketers to conquer.

Oh, and did I mention that by 2016, most studies show that half of all display ads will be purchased using tactics like search retargeting?

So jump into search retargeting. Now is the time to become a leader in the space, because, it is always better to be the expert than the one buying his book.

Donny Dye is a Regional Director at Simpli.fi, “The Most Powerful Search Retargeting Platform on the Planet” and can be reached at 850-879-2682.

Connect with Donny on Linkedin.

http://youtu.be/tf_otJyHOs4

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily David McBee.